History
In the mid-1990s, Finnish book illustrator and comic book artist Petri Hiltunen created a post-apocalyptic fantasy world he called Jaconia, a pseudo-medieval world built on the ruins of an ancient high-technology society. Hiltunen used his new world as the setting for a series of short comics titled ''Praedor'', published in the Finnish role-playing game magazine ''Magus''. He called the comics' protagonists "praedors" — adventurers who explore the old ruins in search of magical artifacts. Hiltunen also used the same setting for a graphic novel, ''Kuninkaan lapset'' (''Children of the King''), in 1998. In 2022 a Praedor omnibus of all Hiltunen's Praedor comics was published. In 2000, Burger Games published ''Praedor: Roolipeli Jaconian seikkailijoista'' (''Praedor: The Role-Playing Game of the Adventurers of Jaconia''), a 258-page collaboration between Hiltunen, who provided the illustrations, and Finnish writer Ville Vuorela. The book is split into three parts: player information,Description
Setting
Jaconia is a circular land roughly 2000 km in diameter, populated by a medieval society with a strict caste system. It is surrounded by the "cursed" land of Borvaria, in reality the ruins of a huge city, all that remains of a highly advanced society that was destroyed in the distant past. Some Jaconians, driven by greed, need or curiosity, shake off the societal bonds to become "praedors", outcasts who comb the ancient Borvarian ruins for pieces of ancient technology that are now called "magic".Game mechanics
Like many fantasy role-playing games, ''Praedor'' uses a system of attributes (Strength, Constitution, etc.) to define a character's abilities. However, there are no "classes" or defined occupations. Instead, the character is defined by skills that the player chooses. The game uses primarily six-sided dice, often rolled as multiple dice versus a target or a skill check.Reception
Writing a retrospective review in 2016 for the Finnish game review site PlayLab, Jukka Särkijärvi called the 16-year-old game system "elegant and simple .. the system is fast to learn and use, and intuitive to understand." He did note that "Combat encounters tend to be brutal ..it is perfectly possible to win the fight and die on the sickbed." However, Särkijärvi concluded that the old game still held up, saying, "''Praedor'' is beginner-friendly and still rewarding to the veteran. Its clever mechanics and strong atmosphere make it an enduring classic."References
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